


Strip you to your bones and find the sonata in your soul

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crushes, M/M, Music, Piano, Stream of Consciousness, Sweet, Unrequited Love, rich people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 05:26:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17718908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Abraxas liked playing the piano, it helped to organise his thoughts, especially those thoughts about Tom.





	Strip you to your bones and find the sonata in your soul

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something sweet, so I'm sorry if this is a bit different to my usual characterisations, I'm also still sorry that I can't write dialogue, anyway hope this isn't too bad. 
> 
> Originally inspired by the piano scene in the film 'Stoker'

Abraxas had always liked music. Liked the sounds the piano made when his nanny had played it for hours when they were alone. Liked the sophisticated harmonies his mother played at the fancy dinner parties, they always held for people they didn’t care about. Even liked the delicate notes the girl who would one day become his wife played from across the room, sheltered behind infinite fake smiles and fashionable refinement. But he would always like it best when he could play alone. In those moments, when it was just him and the piano, the music felt like an escape. For a few minutes, he didn’t need to care about how his future was so meticulously planned. Just for a few minutes, he could pretend his life would be what he wanted it to be. Just for a few minutes, all the concerns that festered in his head could be put aside, and he could live in the moment, happy and uncaring about what tomorrow held for him. He could abandon all the thoughts of money and marriages, modesty and morality, propriety and politeness, and he could just be alone with the music. Be alone and free to play whatever he wanted because he didn’t need to worry what his mother was thinking, or what his father was planning, he didn’t need to be sophisticated or accomplished, he could, just for a while, be nothing more than human. Really it was just an hour to himself, to run his hands over the keys, and paint the room with the symphony he wanted his life to sound like. Even if he knew, everything he wanted was actually impossible for someone like him. 

He knew he played more than proficiently. Hands tapping white and black and white again, up the scale and down again, fingers twisting over each other, his head swaying to the metronome. Building the pace and the sound, slipping further into his fantasy with every chord. Forgetting that his destiny was written like a composition, and with every step, he was playing another note to their tune. Forgetting that no one cared for his dreams. Forgetting that soon he would be married, soon he would have a son, and soon that child too would play the piano to forget who he was.   
Abraxas closed his eyes, he didn’t need to see the notes to play, not when he played this piece every single day. It was his favourite, and always would be. The one that made him feel so calm, the one that soothed his aching fingers and comforted his strained mind. The one he always finished with, because it reminded him of that one person he shouldn’t want to have: Tom.   
Tom was everything Abraxas wasn’t. Sharp and cold where Abraxas was warm, had shadows where he had lightness, and had ambitions that Abraxas could only dream of. Tom was simply perfect. Everyone knew it, from the first word that left his mouth to that artificial smile he finished every conversation with, people knew he was perfect. They all wanted to be him, be with him, to just bask in his wonder until they were all baptised as gods. Abraxas had been one of those people ever since the very beginning. Back so long ago when they were children and the world was made fairy’s wings. Back before they grew up and the reality infected in their hearts. He’d loved Tom since that beginning. Even when was nothing but a cloud of dust, Abraxas had been standing beside him, waiting for him to become the supernova that would rip the world apart. Not that Tom had ever truly acknowledged, he’d always been too busy becoming a star. 

That was why he played this song. It reminded him of Tom and everything he wished Tom could be. How it started so unassuming, before slowly growing into something so beautiful no one could deny it. Abraxas could hardly believe it now, that once Tom was ordinary, that once he was nothing, when now, now he was on the cusp of achieving more than anything someone so underprivileged could ever have expected. There was something fascinating at the way they all looked at Tom, all thought he was special, the future star that would shine so bright. They were right, of course. But Abraxas couldn’t help but wish, just a little, that someone would look at him like that. He wasn’t jealous, he had no reason to be. He just wanted someone to see something as magical as that inside him too. Someone to see that he had beautiful things inside his heart as well as out, that he wasn’t as hollow and empty as Tom. Deep in his heart, he knew he wanted Tom to be the one to acknowledge it, to realise that Abraxas held all the parts that were so absent from him and that together they could be something truly incredible.  
He sighed because Tom would never see; his hands continued, the melodies blurring together, sliding into each other, struggling to find their place in the world, to understand what they were supposed to be. There was confusion then, fear spreading from his fingers and trickling on the keys, and the music went ever so quiet, and he would remember that night he found Tom sitting on the ledge of the fourth-floor window. That night they’d sat together, alone for the first time, Tom holding his cigarette with trembling fingers, blowing smoke like nebulas across the sky. They’d sat up there with the world so far below them, not really talking, only reassuring each other in that silent way. Sitting until their eyes were burning, and, like a child finger-painting, the sun had splattered red all over the sky.   
The music would then build again, growing and curling, mutating into something so fervid, so sonorous, so full and imposing; and all he could think about was Tom eyes when his face was alight, and he was sharing dark and dangerous secrets after midnight. Just the two of them sprawled on the sofa, Tom lying so close to him, smiling, fingers twisting through Abraxas’ hair, telling him all sorts of things he’d never tell anyone else. On those nights Tom’s eyes were so glossy and dark and filled with a new sense of wonder that made Abraxas think he’d seen the divine. He could play that part for hours, fingers always on repeat, just the same notes over and over and over again. Sometimes he did, indulging those desperate fantasies, those pathetic memories, for just a little bit longer. Stretching out his dreams and morphing them into something so real he could almost believe that something truly magical had happened between them.

The next movement of the piece was just as good though, if not better. The music becoming insistent, provocative, no longer afraid to be what it was. Like Tom, it was no longer troubled to be an outsider, no longer fearful to be the one who rose their head and looked at the world in defiance when everyone else bowed down. The piece grew as dark as Tom’s eyes then. Fuller and heavier and he could almost feel Tom standing behind him, his hands on his shoulders and touching his neck and telling him what a dream they could be together. He tilted his neck, practically feeling Tom’s fingers drawing gentle lines, feel his lips kissing his neck, murmuring how much he liked him, how much he wanted him. How much they complemented each other, the dark and the light coming together to make something beautiful. Once Abraxas would have been embarrassed, but now, when he was alone, with no one to judge what he thought, why should he be ashamed of what he wanted?   
As the music hazed, smudging notes together and making the most beautiful sound in the world, he just had to think of Tom’s hands curling into the hollows of his collarbones, mouth against his cheek, just smiling because Tom was so pretty when he smiled. He could feel those hands crushing his insides as they slid lower as the music intensified. Building higher and higher, while Tom’s hand scraped lower and lower; rising and crushing, and rising and crushing, and rising – until it was hitting its climax and he was shuddering.  
Abraxas dropped his hands to his sides. The endless clicking of the metronome continued. No matter how often he played this song, he always had to stop there and catch his breath. Always had to take a few minutes to remember that Tom’s hands were not pressing into his skin, that Tom wasn’t even in the room with him. He was completely alone with only the metronome’s constant clicking for company. 

Abraxas took a deep breath. There was no point imagining things that would never come true. Tom had made it clear that he didn’t crave love. He didn’t need anyone to wrap themselves around his heart. Tom found affection suffocating, at least that’s what he always said when anyone had tried to push it, until one day they just stopped pushing. They’d all come to accept that Tom just wasn’t like the rest of them. He had more important things to think about than wetting his lips with other people’s mouths.  
Abraxas closed his eyes and swallowed, his mouth felt too dry, but it always did when he thought about Tom. He raised his hands again, after all, he still had a few more minutes to be alone, and he liked to play it through three times perfect, that’s what he did every time, and now it was sort of ingrained, a promise from the music that everything would be all right if he could just play it three times through.   
His hand hovered above the note, waiting for the metronome to count him in.  
“Are you going to play it again?”  
He started. Tom was standing against the wall, watching. He looked unduly attractive standing there in the half-shadows, skin warmed by the lights and eyes outrageously dark.   
“I didn’t know you could play, Malfoy,” Tom said stepping forward out of the dim shadows.   
“I didn’t hear you come in, Riddle,” said Abraxas slowly, his face already feeling uncomfortably hot when he remembered all the things he had been thinking of doing with Tom just moments before.   
He’d known that Tom was here, in the house, he was staying with them for the holiday, but Abraxas had left him in his room with a book and hadn’t expected to see him until dinner. He so rarely saw him. He’d only invited him because his mother had insisted on making sure Tom was all right, and his father had insisted on once again meeting a mind he saw as just as brilliant as his own. Tom was usually too busy being adored to spend time with him.   
They watched one another in their usual reserved way, silent other the clicks of the metronome, Tom looking downward and Abraxas gazing up. Each waiting for the other to say something, and start the world moving again. Abraxas never understood why they were so polite with each other. He’d seen more of Tom than he suspected anyone had. He had seen him at three in the morning when the world was crashing down, and he just couldn’t keep everything inside anymore. He’d seen him standing on the edge of a window, looking down and openly wondering what it would be like to die. He’d even stood with him, as the sun set over the black lake and he’d said he wanted to die. He had stayed, standing with Tom, knee deep in the water, just so Tom wouldn’t do something he’d regret. It wasn’t just what he had seen of Tom though, Tom had seen him at his best and his worst and every single emotion in between. They’d laid still together for hours when Abraxas’ grandfather had died and sat together on the edge of the stairs when Druella dumped him, and yet whenever they spoke Tom seemed to pretend that none of that had ever happened, that they were no more than acquaintances, that there was nothing hung so painfully between them.  
“You never told me you could play,” Tom said again, breaking the silence between them. He said it as if it were a personal offence that he was not made aware of it.   
“You never asked,” Abraxas said eventually, letting his eyes return to the piano, already turning the pages of notes back to the beginning.   
“You don’t mind me watching, do you? I _was_ going to say something, but you were – distracted and it seemed a shame to interrupt you.”  
Abraxas could feel himself flushing darker, “what do you want, Riddle?”  
“Well, I just came up here to find you, but now I want to hear you play again.”  
“I don’t like to be watched when I’m practising,” he said hands hovering above the keys, hoping that Tom would just get the message, would just leave him to be embarrassed by himself, would let him blush without any witnesses to his shame. Leave him to continue to dream of what they could be if Tom just opened his eyes and stepped out of his own selfishness.   
“Then think of it not as a practice, but a performance,” said Tom coming closer, close enough that he could rest an elegant hand on the edge of the wood, fingers curling over the edge, and smiling like an angel. “You can perform for me, can’t you Abraxas?”

Abraxas watched him for a moment, Tom only tilted his neck back, highlighting his perfect jawline, a smirk lurking at the corner of his mouth. Abraxas swallowed and tore his eyes away. He hated Tom. Hated that he could make him do things like this because Tom always had other options, other people who were ever so willing to be his friend. He didn’t need Abraxas, not like he needed him. So, Abraxas focused his attention on the piano, he placed his hands against the keys, and started the piece again: white and black and white again, up the scale and down again, fingers twisting over each other, his head swaying to the metronome. Dipping between high and low, deep and shallow, back and forth, harder and softer. Letting the music once again engulf him, letting it soak him like the sea and the notes drip from his fingers. Playing melody after melody, trying to pretend that his hands weren’t shaking, and his heart wasn’t hitting his chest quite that hard.   
His illusion of control was broken when he heard extra notes playing where his hands were not. He opened his eyes and watched as Tom’s fingers pressed the upper keys. For a second, he was thrown off balance, the world realigning itself before his eyes. He turned back to his own hands, trying to find his place, pretend that Tom meant nothing, but Tom leaned closer, taking a seat beside him.   
Their arms were touching, and for someone with a rime coated heart, Tom was impossibly warm and impossibly deliberate with his fingers. Intimately knowing the simplicity it took to make beautiful sounds. When Tom saw him staring, he smirked, and continued to play, nodding his head to the metronome, counting the beats that made Abraxas’ heart thud so painfully. 

They played together. Each complementing the other, learning how they played and how they could balance the composition. Tom was faster, a staccato of perfect imprecisions. Abraxas was slower, a legato pulling them deeper into something he didn’t understand. The confusion of his heart wasn’t helped by the carelessness of Tom’s hands, the way they strayed further than then needed to, gliding over Abraxas’, catching his knuckles every time, and sending little tremors of electricity through his fingers and down into his stomach.  
He hated Tom, hated his assurance and his grace and his pretty, pretty hands. Such long, lean fingers that looked so good stretched across the keys, so unashamed as they spread themselves wider, and played notes so beautiful that even God must have wept. Hated that he could somehow make himself even more perfect. That even after he thought he knew everything that hovered in Tom’s head, he could bring out a new accomplishment and make him fall in love a little bit more. But Tom didn’t care for his feelings, and with every note he played, Abraxas fell further behind in this game. He was spending too long admiring and not enough time competing. Too caught up in paper dreams to remember that this was _just_ another game that Tom had decided they were going to play. Abraxas was used to these games. He’d seen Tom play them with Lestrange, pushing the limits of friendship right to edge, just for the sake of seeing who would crack first. It was always Lestrange. Abraxas would be lying if he said he hadn’t stayed up late to watch them, hidden at the bottom of the stairs, just watching how Tom smiled, watching them play chess together. Tom stringing Lestrange along, making him think he could win, whilst walking all over him. He’d watched Tom be underhand when he wasn’t winning, scraping his hand over Lestrange’s, and chewing on his lip until Lestrange was distracted and made yet another fatal mistake. He had seen them sit together, legs tangled, Tom’s fingers on the back of Lestrange’s neck, murmuring things to him that made him close his eyes and clench his jaw. It was beautiful to watch Tom grind his resistance down, layer by layer, dragging him down to join him in whatever pit of hell he resided. Abraxas wanted to do that too, drag Lestrange down, drag Tom down, drag anyone down, as long as he got to watch them fall apart.   
But _he_ wasn’t going to be like Lestrange, wasn’t going to give in to Tom so quickly, wasn’t going to break apart and beg for him to do everything he wouldn’t. Abraxas would not give him such a simple reason to throw him away too quickly. So, he stole Tom’s pace, stole his notes before he could play them and forced them back to a sensual slowness. Deep carnal chords complemented with rich notes that made Tom smile. It was a performance piece, designed to flaunt exactly what thousands of pounds of musical education and raw talent could produce, which was exactly what Tom had asked for if he thought about it: a true performance. He could feel Tom’s eyes on him as he played, burning holes in his throat and making it difficult to swallow. Tom didn’t interrupt though, he seemed content to just watch for a while, eyes on the keys, intent and completely immersed in how Abraxas’ fingers moved. He looked gorgeous this close, simply striking when he thought no one was watching. Smooth skin and eyelashes so dark, eyes themselves fixed in the moment, reading the music behind his eyes, finding his place and when the moment came, translating it onto the piano before him.   
He smiled when he purloined the piece back again, although this time, he didn’t raise the pace, but instead maintained that slow sensuality: inviting Abraxas to play, rather than compete with him. This wasn’t how he did it with Lestrange, this almost felt like equality, a parity between them, and the way Tom smiled only seemed to confirm it. Tom had silently opened up a little, only a fraction, but enough that Abraxas got to see more of him than he had before. 

Abraxas couldn’t help but wonder where Tom learnt to play. He even questioned briefly whether they were playing at all, it could quite easily have been an elaborate fantasy cast by the cruellest parts of his mind. Forcing him to witness everything he didn’t have, but Tom was so warm and material beside him, real enough in his brilliance to convince Abraxas that he really was there, and Tom really was beside him, playing music, like it was nothing.   
He also had to wonder whether Tom knew what he was doing to him when their hands brushed. He probably did, probably enjoyed torturing him just because he could. Probably knew exactly what he was doing because Tom knew everything. Though none of that stopped the jolt Abraxas felt in his stomach whenever Tom’s fingers caught his. The twisting when Tom leaned over him, a hand reaching behind, their shoulders touching, making him bite his lip for no reason. It shouldn’t have felt so suggestive, but somehow Tom’s palm sliding across his spine felt so much more intimate than anything he did with girls he didn’t really like. Those moments were merely functional, when this, this was terrifying. How it made his breath catch in his throat and his heart beat uncomfortably, loud enough that he was sure Tom could hear it. Not to mention how his fingers trembled at thought of all the other things that Tom could do. How he could replace his palm with his mouth, tongue tracing the bones in the place of his fingers. Tom kissing down his spine and tracing the curves of his muscles, dipping his tongue into artless creases. He could imagine Tom looking up at him with his dark eyes, smiling as he caressed the softness at his thighs, pressing wet kisses into places no one would ever find them. He would love to have Tom on his knees, have his own fingers twisted in Tom’s perfect hair, see the haze in his eyes and all the violence he knew was lurking inside him, have it all burst out in a sudden surge, have Tom finally stripped of all that overwhelming control.   
Abraxas snapped out of his daydream. Tom’s hands were skimming over his wrists, touching the bare skin for a second too long. He inhaled sharply and squeezed his thighs together as if Tom could read his thoughts. He shifted slightly and let Tom take the piano’s pedals, distinctly aware of how his legs moved, pressing forward and then retracting, pressing forward and then retracting, always keeping to rhythm, making Abraxas wondered if Tom would manage to keep such perfect time if he was lying between his hipbones. 

Between the music stirring his head and Tom’s body pressing against his, Abraxas was being dragged further and further into a maelstrom that he didn’t fully understand. They had sat together before, laid in perfect silence, Tom’s fingers always in his hair, but none of that felt like this. This was different, not a childish longing, but a maturity, a desire that was arising from the depths of his stomach. He wanted Tom in a way he’d never felt was possible, wanted more than his hands in his hair, and more than his mouth between his thighs; he wanted all of Tom, his body, heart and spirit all exposed before him. Wanted all the warmth and all the darkness and all the intensity that made up Tom to be tangible between his fingers, he wanted to touch the cruelty that dwelt beneath his skin, and feel all the fear and horror that resided in his head. He wanted to not just lie with Tom, not just press their lips together and smile, but to truly understand him, to grasp every inch and see what made him tick. But with Tom by his side and the music gliding through his brain, he was painfully aware that that wasn’t possible, that Tom didn’t care for other people, that they didn’t deserve to see inside him, and that only made Tom’s actions more excruciating. The way their hands collided more often, how their legs were pressed together, how Tom so close, burning his skin, making him believe them could melt into each other. Believe they could find that perfect equilibrium and dissolve together in a perfect symphony of youth, and yet knowing that they couldn’t. Knowing that Tom would fake an incompatibility just to avoid ever having to show his soul. Tom didn’t care that his mouth was dry. He didn’t care that Abraxas was shaking as they delved further and further into the depths of their hearts building to that crescendo. He wondered if Tom even noticed how the music was building and their hands colliding, the music building and their hands colliding, the music building and hands colliding, music building, hands colliding, building, colliding until they struck that peak and he was groaning, and Tom’s fingers trailed the last few notes alone. 

Abraxas swallowed, not trusting himself to look at Tom. Not when his breathing was unsteady and heart was thudding, and his mouth was so dry. A part of him wanted to do something rash and stupid, something that would move them beyond friendship far too quickly. Something he would undoubtedly regret when it was over and Tom was politely declining his advances, or rather cruelly declining, as Tom would, simply because he could. Abraxas just wanted to kiss him, that was it, finally feel their mouths pressed against each other, and discover whether they fitted together as well as he thought they would.   
“You never told me you could play,” Abraxas said quietly, still not daring to look at Tom.   
“You never asked,” said Tom watching at him, head tilted to the side like he’d done when he was younger, and they were alone, and Abraxas had dared to dream of all the things they could do. He had had so many fictions in his head, so many dreams of Tom just leaning over and kissing him in the dark when there was no one to judge them. So many dreams of the things that Tom could do, how all his actions were overflowing with unfulfilled potential. So many times, Abraxas had buried those thoughts deep inside his head in a desperate attempt to make them stay buried forever.   
“Who taught you?” Abraxas said instead of all those other things.   
“Does it matter?”  
“Not really.” They continued to sit in a silence interrupted by the metronome, it clicked back and forth and back and forth only emphasising the silence. Tom stopped the pendulum, and the room became very silent.   
“I like playing with you,” Tom said. It was an unexpected announcement in the quiet and it made Abraxas’ heart ache.   
“You play well,” Tom finished, and it was probably the closest thing to a compliment that Tom could manage.  
“I play better than you,” said Abraxas still preferring to take an interest in the small specks of dust on the keys than Tom’s face. He didn’t want to know the curious way Tom was looking at him, trying to work out the secrets that were written all over his face.   
“Perhaps, but you’ve had more practice, more time to perfect your technique as it were. More time to refine your dexterity and tune to ear to the sound. You have simply had more opportunity.”  
“What do you want, Riddle?” said Abraxas, interrupting before Tom could start another speech on his offensive level of wealth. Tom shut his mouth and shifted a little. Abraxas could feel how close he really was, it didn’t make him uncomfortable, only suspicious because Tom only did this sort of thing to other people when he wanted something.   
“I don’t want anything, actually.”  
“Liar.”  
Tom looked at him, “there’s no need to be so discourteous.”  
“Isn’t there? I thought we were just playing another game, another opportunity for you to keep me on my toes, and you to demonstrate how you are untouchable on your throne of manipulation.” He regretted it a little as soon as the words left his mouth, they were too harsh, but Tom was just being cruel, and frankly, he deserved it.   
Tom licked his lips and took a while to speak. “I can play games if you like, but I’d rather not today,” Tom leaned closer, “do you want to hear the truth, Abraxas?” he said.   
“Depends what it’s about, doesn’t it?”  
“It’s about you.”  
Abraxas turned to look at him. Tom was smiling, eyes dark in the dimness, and a smile that he’d never seen before.   
“You’re going to tell me anyway.”  
Tom shrugged, “that doesn’t mean you don’t want to hear.”  
“What is it then?” he said, holding Tom’s eyes, searching for the specks of gold that lurked in their murky depths, at least hearing whatever painful thing Tom had lined up could be offset by the prettiness of his eyes.   
“I learnt to play because of you because you surprised me with what you could do with your hands.” As if to make a point, Tom’s fingers brushed against his own. “You were remarkable, and I was so intrigued by what you saw in the music, how you made sounds have colours and flavours, how you could make anything sound absolutely flawless. You create masterpieces with no paper and no ink, you write your story in the sky and you made me see things I hadn’t seen before.”  
Abraxas could feel his face flushing, and he hoped that Tom didn’t notice in the gloom. He wished he could be cool and collected, and that Tom’s meaningless words wouldn’t make him flustered.   
Tom’s hand against his cheek jolted him into reality again, and he dared to raise his eyes to meet Tom’s own. Tom was smiling, and continued to smile, even as it felt like his fingers were burning holes through Abraxas’ cheek.  
“You think I don’t mean what I say, Abraxas? I do. Your music is different from everything else in the world, turns it into an optical illusion, a hallucination where all your dreams come true. What are your dreams, Abraxas? What do you imagine as you play? Is it me? Is it all the things you want to do to me?” he murmured, lips just brushing against his neck and his knuckles sliding down the length of his body before coming to rest as an outstretched palm on Abraxas’ thigh.   
“What are you doing Riddle?” Abraxas said, trying to make it sound authoritative and imposing, but ruining it when his words caught in his throat.  
“Tell me to stop and I will,” he said lips moving so slowly and making Abraxas feel like he was going to melt.   
“I want – I want to stop playing games,” he said, he wanted to say more to push Tom away before whatever this cruel hoax went any further. Before he embarrassed himself and gave Tom whatever it was that he wanted. That’s what he should have done, pushed them back into comfortable longing, endless glances from across the room dreaming of something he could never have. But he didn’t do any of that. He didn’t tell him to stop because he didn’t want to, didn’t want to push Tom away and have to face never again lying with him after midnight, never again seeing him smile, never again hearing him speak so calmly because Tom didn’t take kindly to being forced out.  
Tom didn’t stop. Instead, he kissed along Abraxas’ jaw and murmured, “I told you, Abraxas, I’m not playing games. I am only asking you if you think about me when you play?”  
Abraxas swallowed, “you know I do.”  
“Do you think of everything you want to do to me?”  
Abraxas hated him, but himself more, that he replied, “yes.”  
“Will you tell me what you think?”

Abraxas blushed. He’d never shared any of the things that he wanted to do to Tom, and none of those things sounded remotely appropriate to say aloud. “You wouldn’t like to hear them,” he said quietly.  
“I would like nothing more than to hear them,” Tom said, pressing his hand down against his thigh until it felt like it was searing an imprint into his skin.   
Abraxas swallowed. “I want to touch you.”  
Tom had gone back to mouthing at his neck in a way that made his stomach curl, “where?” he asked.  
Abraxas licked his lips and tried to think of words, tried to ignore Tom’s mouth on his neck, whilst also trying to feel his every shift and to try and work out what he was feeling.  
“I want to touch your hand, I want to feel your palm, slide my fingers between yours.”   
Tom raised his free hand up, “go on then,” he said. Abraxas glanced unsure between the hand raised and waiting, and Tom’s eyes watching him. He wanted to hold out, not show Tom just how much he had been dreaming of touching him. He didn’t.   
Tom’s fingers were soft and smooth and not in the least bit ticklish. He ran his own fingers up Tom’s, feeling the length, pressing against them and spreading them, before sliding between them and closing against his knuckles. After a few seconds, Tom’s hand closed as well, making a light pressure on his knuckles. It was a painfully intimate gesture that had his stomach twisting, and he wondered if Tom felt it too, if Tom ever felt anything towards him, or whether this was just an experiment.   
“That can’t be all you want to do,” Tom said, tearing his eyes away from their hands and looking back at Abraxas.  
“I want to run my hands through your hair, I want to touch your face. I want you on your knees, and I want to have my hands around your throat,” he swallowed thickly, “and feel your pulse, and make sure your real. I want to open you up and see inside your soul”  
Tom swallowed, throat working obscenely, and even in the dull light Abraxas could see the faint flush on his cheeks, “anything else?” he said, although the words sounded sticky in his throat as if he couldn’t quite find a way to say them with choking on their meaning.  
Abraxas swallowed, he didn’t want to go any further, but he liked what it was doing to Tom, and, anyway, what was the point in holding anything back now?   
“I want you on your back, and I want to kiss you, I want to run my fingers down your throat,” Abraxas raised his other hand and pressed his fingers to the centre of Tom’s throat. He traced his fingers downward, slipping between Tom’s collarbones, and down his chest. “I want to touch every part of you, discover who you keep beneath your skin,” Tom closed his eyes and visibly swallowed again as Abraxas’ fingers scraped over his hipbones. “I want to take you apart, piece, by piece, until I can understand what you are; and I don’t care how long it takes to strip you down to your bare heart, I only want to know what you look like when I do it.”  
Tom opened his eyes, they were dark, so dark, large liquid pupils dripping with something new. He’d be lying if he said they didn’t do something to him. They did. They really did. Just seeing Tom swathed in shadows, looking so needy, his hand gripping Abraxas’ thigh so firmly, and his breathing unsteady, made his stomach jolt.  
“That’s what you think about?” said Tom, his voice so quiet, “me on my back, and you doing exactly what you want, under the guise of a spiritual awakening.”  
Tom moved his hand, running it along Abraxas’ thigh all the way to his knee and back again. Neither of them took their eyes off of each other. There was too much to see in Tom’s eyes, too many emotions that swelled and receded like the tide. Much more cautiously Abraxas moved his own fingers, slid them off Tom’s hipbone and along the length of his thigh, mirroring every one of his own actions.

Tom smiled before moving, lifting his leg over the piano stall so that he was sitting with one either side. Abraxas couldn’t help but drag his eyes all over him, lingering on every part he shouldn’t, admiring the nonchalance with which Tom exposed himself, opening up a fraction of a bit more. Whilst also admiring the spread of his legs and the way he tilted his neck, all because he knew Abraxas was watching him. When he was comfortable, Abraxas put his hand back on Tom’s thigh without waiting for an explicit confirmation. He didn’t want to wait. He didn’t need to wait. He could see that Tom wanted this, that Tom almost needed it.  
Tom leaned in closer to him then, so close that their foreheads were touching, and could swear he could hear Tom’s thoughts  
“I like the things you imagine,” Tom murmured, “you make them sound interesting.”   
They stared at each other for a moment longer, Abraxas’ brain slowly computing what Tom said. Then Tom was pressing his lips to Abraxas’, and what was left of Abraxas’ brain turned to slush. Tom’s mouth was just so warm and persuasive, it made Abraxas inclined to agree with him, inclined to ignore his suspicions that this was anything other than what he wanted it to be. Just kissing Tom felt intimate, felt special, made him moan more than he’d have liked. Not helped by Tom’s fingers drawing endless agonising circles between his thighs. Their hands only separating to find new connections. For Abraxas to feel the bones at the back of Tom’s neck and for Tom to trace along his collarbones. For them to both get lost in each other for that much longer, just tasting each other’s mouths, dissolving under the heat of each other’s tongues, just seeing how far they were each willing to take this. But even as Abraxas tested the waters, he could feel himself melting a little more into Tom, being dragged by his tongue towards the dark, towards things he never thought he’d be able to get his hands on. He wasn’t honestly sure if he was playing this new game or being played, being moulded into exactly what Tom wanted. Perhaps he was merely being played like the piano, Tom’s fingers all smooth and elegant, hitting the right notes as he kissed him, though by now, he didn’t care. He would do anything if he got to live out just a fraction of his fantasy, anything that Tom asked just to push him against his bed and unhook every secret that was hidden on his body.   
If Tom truly loved his music, then he would find a way to play his body like an instrument. Lie with him and kiss him and touch him. Take him apart seam by seam just as he had imagined, strip back his composure and his self-control and every other wall Tom had ever built around himself until he found that singular rawness beneath all the pageantry, that unrefined melody that played on a loop in his soul. He would write whatever that melody was, harmonise it, turn it into something truly beautiful, and then play it with Tom by his side. Their fingers knocking together when they played: white and black and white again, up the scale and down again, fingers twisting over each other, heads swaying to the metronome.


End file.
